HomeEducationDoctorate (PhD & EngD)First doctoral defence for RMIT and University of Twente’s joint PhD programme

First doctoral defence for RMIT and University of Twente’s joint PhD programme

Today Phil Wilkes is defending his doctoral thesis at the University of Twente. In doing so he will obtain a doctorate at both the University of Twente and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and becomes the first graduate of a joint PhD programme run by the two universities. Wilkes conducted part of his research at the University of Twente’s Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation and part in Australia.

The joint degree programme at the University of Twente and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology results in a doctorate that bears the name of both universities and meets the quality requirements of both institutions. Supervising professor Andrew Skidmore believes doctoral candidates benefit hugely by receiving guidance from both universities. “They can make use of the expertise and experience of scientists from the two universities and also have access to the research facilities of both institutions.”

Joint doctorate programme

The joint PhD programme stems from a partnership that the University of Twente and RMIT signed in the spring of 2013. In addition to Phil Wilkes, six other candidates are currently pursuing the doctoral programme. According to Dr Paul van Dijk, Director of the Twente Graduate School, this is a sure sign of the programme’s success. Unlike a double doctorate – in which a PhD candidate receives two diplomas, one from each university – these candidates will receive a ‘double-badged’ diploma bearing the logos of the University of Twente and RMIT. As Dr Van Dijk explains, “This is a much more fitting expression of the cooperation involved. But above all it is good for the CV of the candidate who has completed the programme. It clearly shows that the candidate is able to cooperate at an international level and can successfully meet the high standards of two universities with an excellent reputation.” Wilkes conducted much of his research in Australia, but made regular trips to Enschede and received plenty of remote supervision from his professors at the Dutch faculty. 

Doctoral research

During his doctoral studies, Wilkes worked on techniques to estimate the height and the vertical structure of trees in large forest areas in order to obtain more information about the amount of wood in the forest. This is relevant for climate research, sustainable forest management and gauging susceptibility to fires. Existing techniques were unable to generate reliable estimates for large areas with different types of forest – and almost all major areas contain several forest types. Wilkes developed techniques that facilitate far more accurate estimates.  

Phil Wilkes’s doctoral defence

Wilkes defends his dissertation today at 16.45 in lecture hall 4 of De Waaier building, on the University of Twente campus. It is entitled Assessment of forest canopy vertical structure with multiscale remote sensing: from the plot to the large area and his research was supervised by Prof. Andrew Skidmore and Prof. Simon Jones.